45 Rabbis Back Bernie Sanders on Economic Policy
Image by Getty Images
Some 45 rabbis from all religious streams have signed a petition backing the economic policies of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
The petition posted Thursday by “Jews for Bernie,” a group backing the candidate, does not itself endorse the bid of Sanders, an Independent senator from Vermont, to seek the Democratic presidential nomination. It remains open for signatures.
It does embrace his economic outlook however, with its emphasis on redressing economic inequality.
“We are compelled to lend our voices in support of the economic agenda expressed by Senator Bernie Sanders, which seeks to elevate those living in dire poverty, to restore America’s middle class, and to abate the enrichment of America’s wealthiest at the expense of America’s neediest,” the petition says.
The petition quotes Jewish texts, including the bible, the Talmud and the Shulchan Aruch to make the case “not to subvert the rights of the poor and the worker, but to attend to their needs.”
“We declare support for the economic reforms expressed by Senator Sanders in the hope that all candidates for public office will embrace the goal of an economically just society,” it says.
Most of the signatories are U.S.-based, although three live in Israel; all are U.S. citizens. They represent all streams, including Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and Renewal.
Among them are Aryeh Cohen, a professor of rabbinic literature at the American Jewish University in southern California, Rabbi Yaakov Komisar, who teaches at the Ezra Academy, an Orthodox middle school in Forest Hills, N.Y., Rabbi Alana Suskin, the director of strategic communications at Americans for Peace Now, and Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, the director of the Social Justice Organizing Program at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.
Sanders is the first Jewish candidate to have won a presidential primary, last month in New Hampshire. He has won five nominating contests so far, half the ten won by his rival, former secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
